From the Official Strategy Guide
http://starfighter.home.att.net/evochro ... lguide.htm
Mining
To get started mining, simply fly close to an asteroid and activate the mining beam. You can lock the beam on by pressing the default Alt-B key combination. If you are close enough to the asteroid to mine it, you will see hot red particles of the asteroid fly off from its surface as the beam cuts into the rock. If you do not see this effect, you're not close enough to the asteroid. In Sapphire, metal ore is generally not very valuable, so you can discard any metal you recover in favor of platinum or diamonds, which are far more valuable. To discard an item, simply click on its listing in your cargo bay. Once a cargo bay slot is empty, it can accept any material. But once one unit of a material is placed in a cargo bay slot, you can only continue to load units of that material type into that cargo bay slot. The reason for this is so you can manually manage what material you mine and it accommodates the different shapes and sizes of each material type. Each unit of a material is assigned a unique shape for every container that holds it. These shapes are only compatible with each other and must 'fit' together inside each of your cargo bay slots. Your mining and loading system will automatically take care of this sorting procedure for you, all you need to do is select which materials you want to keep or discard. You can pre-prime your cargo bays by buying or leaving only 1 unit of an item in each cargo bay, then travel to an asteroid field to mine. This lets you recover only the material you want while mining. To buy or sell individual units of items at a time, use right click instead of left click.
Once you have filled your cargo bay with the material(s) you want, travel to the nearby planet Rivoch to sell what you have for better profit. You can also mine the surface of planets for other valuable materials. Mining this way is a safe way to make decent credits early in the game.
You can also earn a few credits while you descend into a planet atmosphere. Keep your tractor beam on as you descend into a planet atmosphere to recover oxygen. This can be sold for as much as 30-50K once you arrive at a city by the time you land, easily covering the costs of fuel for the descent and also leaving you with plenty of credits left over.
Now that I have introduced myself and praised the game, let me ask my question.
You can also mine on planets. If you stay close to a city, travel time becomes less of an issue. Also, for asteroids ... although the minerals aren't depleted, different asteroid fields can contain different minerals.
And mad cat
:P:P:P:P:P:P:P:P